Hall Of Fame Gives Expansion-Era Stars A Fresh Look

COOPERSTOWN—The Hall of Fame announced changes to its era-committee system that will allow various 16-member electorates to reconsider the cases for players passed over by the writers, so long as those players have been retired for at least 15 seasons.

The various era committees also are responsible for enshrining managers, umpires and executives, but the Hall’s restructured timeframes are explicitly designed to emphasize the game’s expansion era by holding more frequent elections for players from the past five decades.

That’s good news for stars of the Hall of Fame-defined categories of modern baseball (1970 to 1987) and today’s game (1988 to present), because dozens of players will now have their cases reconsidered twice every five years rather than once every three.

That players from the past quarter century now have their own category is particularly notable, because in the past, stars of the late-1980s, 1990s and 2000s had been lumped in with all players of the expansion era.

“Notably, there are twice as many players in the Hall of Fame who debuted before 1950 as compared to afterward, and yet there are nearly double the eligible candidates after 1950 than prior,” Hall chairman of the board Jane Forbes Clark said in a press release. “Those who served the game long ago and have been evaluated many times on past ballots will now be reviewed less frequently.”

Standouts from the pre-expansion era, as well as Negro Leagues stars, will still have their careers reviewed by the era committees, but with less frequency. Players from the golden days (1950 to 1969) will be eligible for an era-committee ballot once every five years, while those from early baseball (1871 to 1949) will be considered once every 10 years.

The voting body widely known as the veterans committee had previously considered the cases for all overlooked players, but the Hall devised a three-committee system in 2010 that it has now expanded to four committees.

Which Players Stand To Benefit?

The baseball writers take their roles as guardians of Cooperstown seriously, and they have a strong voting record when it comes to enshrining candidates in the Hall of Fame. With the induction of Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza this year, the writers are responsible for electing just 116 of the 246 individuals (47 percent) represented in the Hall as players.

While the veterans committees of the 1960s and 1970s frequently guided the ship astray by electing dubiously-qualified candidates to the Hall, a review board of some type is a necessary mechanism to the election process. As they exist today, the era committees serve the Hall by correcting oversights by the writers—rare as they may be—and by increasing the likelihood that the village of Cooperstown will see an induction ceremony each summer.

The restructured era committees will be meeting eight times in the next nine years to consider players from the past five decades.

The today’s-game committee will reexamine cases for stars from 1988 to present during elections to be held in 2016, 2018, 2021 and 2023.

The modern-baseball committee will vote on stars from 1970 to 1987 in elections to be held in 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2024.

To qualify for the 10-man ballot, a player must be retired for 15 seasons, which encompasses his five-year waiting period and then 10 years of eligibility on the writers’ ballot. No waiting period is required, so a player who falls off his 10th and final ballot in January of a given year becomes eligible that fall’s era-committee election.

While it’s impossible to state exactly which players from 1970 to present will appear on the two committees’ ballots in the eight forthcoming elections, we can make an educated guess as to some of the names. Among those players who no longer appear on the writers’ ballot, here are the most qualified candidates at each position (with eligibility status in parentheses), according to Jay Jaffe’s WAR Score system presented at Baseball-Reference.com.

• C: Ted Simmons (now)
• 1B: Rafael Palmeiro (2020), Mark McGwire (now)
• 2B: Bobby Grich (now), Lou Whitaker (now)
• 3B: Graig Nettles (now)
• SS: Alan Trammell (now)
• LF: No qualified candidate
• CF: Kenny Lofton (2022), Jim Edmonds (2025)
• RF: Dwight Evans (now)
• SP: Rick Reuschel (now), Kevin Brown (2020), Luis Tiant (now), David Cone (2018)

Tim Raines will occupy the left-field spot if he fails to be elected by the writers in 2017, his final year on the ballot.

Fred McGriff and Edgar Martinez each have three years of eligibility remaining on the writers’ ballot. If they don’t make the cut, then they become compelling candidates for the today’s-game committee.

Jeff Bagwell and Larry Walker each have four years of eligibility remaining, though Bagwell reached 71.6 percent of the vote in the 2016 election and appears to be on track for enshrinement.